Iteration Planning

Iteration Planning is an event where all team members determine how much of the Team Backlog they can commit to delivering during an upcoming Iteration. The team summarizes the work as a set of committed Iteration Goals.

Teams plan by selecting Stories from the team backlog and committing to execute a set of them in the upcoming iteration. The team’s backlog has been seeded and partially planned during the Program Increment (PI) Planning meeting. In addition, the teams have feedback—not only from their prior iterations but from the System Demo and other teams. That, and the natural course of changing fact patterns, provides the broader context for iteration planning. The output of iteration planning is:

The iteration backlog, consisting of the stories committed to the iteration, with acceptance criteria where appropriate

A statement of iteration goals, typically a sentence or two stating the business objectives of the iteration

A commitment by the team to the work needed to achieve the goals

Details

The purpose of iteration planning is to organize the work and define a realistic scope for the iteration. Each Agile Team agrees on a set of stories for the upcoming iteration (the iteration backlog) and summarizes those stories into a set of iteration goals. The iteration backlog and goals are based on the team’s capacity and allow for consideration of each story’s complexity, size, and dependencies on other stories and other teams. At the end of planning, the teams commit to the goal of the iteration and adjust stories as necessary to achieve the larger purpose. In return, management does not interfere or adjust the scope of the iteration, allowing the team to stay focused on the goals.

Inputs to Iteration Planning

In SAFe, iteration planning is a refinement of the level of detail and an adjustment of the initial iteration plans created during Agile Release Train (ART) PI planning. Teams approach iteration planning with a pre-elaborated team backlog. (They have usually held a backlog refinement meeting during the previous iteration.) There are a number of inputs to the planning meeting:

The team’s PI plan backlog, which consists of stories that were identified during PI planning

Additional stories that arise based on local context, including items such as defects, refactors, and new stories that have come about since the planning session

Feedback from the prior iteration, including any stories that were not successfully completed (did not meet the Definition of Done; see “A Scaled Definition of Done” in the Release on Demand article) in that iteration

Planning the Iteration

Prior to the meeting, the Product Owner (PO) will have prepared some preliminary iteration goals, based on the team’s progress in the program increment. Typically, the Product Owner starts the meeting by reviewing the proposed iteration goals and the higher-priority stories in the team backlog. During the meeting, the Agile team discusses implementation options, technical issues, Nonfunctional Requirements (NFRs), and dependencies, then plans the iteration. The Product Owner defines the what; the team defines how and how much.

Throughout the meeting, the team elaborates the acceptance criteria and estimates the effort to complete each story. Based on their velocity, the team then selects the candidate stories. Some break each story down into tasks and forecast them in hours to confirm that they have the capacity and skills to complete them. Once completed, the team commits to the work and records the iteration backlog in a visible place, such as a storyboard, Kanban board or tooling. Planning is timeboxed to a maximum of four hours for a two-week iteration.

Establishing Velocity

First, the team quantifies their capacity to perform work in the upcoming iteration. Each team member determines their availability, acknowledging time off and other potential duties. This activity also takes into account other standing commitments—such as maintenance—that is distinct from new story development (see the section about capacity allocation in the Team Backlog article).

Story Analysis and Estimating

Once team member capacity has been established, the team backlog is reviewed. Each story is discussed, covering relative difficulty, size, complexity, technical challenges, and acceptance criteria. Finally, the team agrees to a size estimate for the story. There are typically other types of stories on the team backlog as well, including Enablers that could constitute infrastructure work, refactoring, research Spikes, architectural improvements, and defects. These items are also prioritized and estimated.

Tasking Stories

Some teams break each story into tasks. As the tasks are identified, team members discuss each one: who would be the best person(s) to accomplish it, approximately how long it will take (typically in hours), and any dependencies it may have on other tasks or stories. Once all this is understood, a team member takes responsibility for a specific task or tasks. As team members commit to tasks, they reduce their individual iteration capacity until it reaches zero. Often, toward the end of the session, some team members will find themselves overcommitted, while others will have some of their capacity still available. This situation leads to a further discussion among team members to evenly distribute the work.

While breaking stories into tasks is fairly common, it is optional and not mandated in SAFe. It is mostly used by beginner teams to learn their velocity and capabilities, and then they become unnecessary, with the team planning only with stories.

Developing Iteration Goals

Once the iteration backlog is understood, the team turns their attention to synthesizing one or more iteration goals that are based on the team and program PI objectives from the PI planning session and the iteration backlog. The closer this iteration is to the PI planning session, the more likely the program objectives will remain unchanged.

Committing to Iteration Goals

When the team’s collective capacity has been reached in terms of committed stories, no more stories are pulled from the team backlog. At this point, the Product Owner and team agree on the final list of stories that will be selected, and they revisit and restate the iteration goals. The entire team then commits to the iteration goals, and the scope of the work remains fixed for the duration of the iteration.

Attendees

Any other stakeholders, including representatives from different Agile teams or the ART, and subject matter experts

Agenda

An example agenda for iteration planning follows:

Calculate the available team capacity for the iteration.

Discuss each story, elaborate acceptance criteria, and provide estimates using story points.

Planning stops once the team runs out of capacity.

Determine and agree on the iteration goals.

Everyone commits to the goals.

Acceptance criteria are developed through conversation and collaboration with the Product Owner and other stakeholders. Based on the story estimates, the Product Owner may change the ranking of the stories. Optionally, the team may break stories into tasks, estimated in hours, and takes shared responsibility for execution.

Guidelines

Below are some tips for holding an iteration planning meeting:

Timebox the meeting to 4 hours or less

This planning session is organized by the team and is for the team

A team should avoid committing to work that exceeds its historical velocity

Relative Estimating, Velocity, and Normalizing Story Point Estimating

Agile teams use story points to relatively estimate user stories in story points [2, 3]. With relative estimating, the size (effort) for each backlog item is compared to other stories. For example, an eight-point story is four times the effort as a two-point story. The team’s velocity for an iteration is equal to the sum of all the stories completed in the prior iteration. Knowing a team’s velocity assists with planning and helps limit Work in Process (WIP)—teams don’t take on more stories than their prior velocity would allow. Velocity is also used to estimate how long it takes to deliver Features or Epics, which are also forecasted in story points.

Normalizing Story Point Estimating

In Scrum, each team’s story point estimation—and the resultant velocity—is typically a local and independent matter. The fact that a small team might estimate in such a way that their velocity is 50, while another larger team estimates that their velocity is 13, usually does not pose a concern.

In SAFe, however, story point estimation must be normalized, so that estimates for Features or Epics that require the support of multiple teams are based on the same story point definition, allowing a shared basis for economic decision-making. One starting algorithm is as follows:

1. Normalize story point estimation:

Find a small story that would take about a half-day to develop and a half-day to test and validate, and call it a “one”

Estimate every other story relative to that “one”

2. Establish velocity before historical data exists:

For every full-time developer and tester on the team, give the team 8 points (adjust for part-timers)

Subtract one point for every team member vacation day and holiday in the iteration

Example: Assuming a six-person team composed of three developers, two testers, and one PO, with no vacations, then the estimated initial velocity equals 5 × 8 points or 40 points per iteration. (Note: The team may need to adjust a bit lower if one of the developers and testers is also the Scrum Master.)

Normalized estimation is particularly helpful in initial PI planning, as many teams will be new to Agile and will need a way to estimate the scope of work in their first PI. Note: There is no need to recalibrate team estimating or velocities after that point. It is just a common starting point. In this way, all teams estimate the size of work in a common fashion, so management can quickly estimate the cost for a story point for teams in a specific region. They then have a meaningful way to establish the aggregate cost estimate for an upcoming feature or epic.

While teams will tend to increase their velocity over time—and that is a good thing—in fact, the number tends to remain stable, and a team’s velocity is far more affected by changing team size, makeup, and technical context than by productivity changes. And, if necessary, financial planners can adjust the cost per story point a bit. This is a minor concern compared to the wildly differing velocities that teams of comparable size may have in the non-normalized case.